News, 11/21/2016

Finland emojis win Best Use of Social Media at City Nation Place Awards in London

The Finland emoji collection won the Best Use of Social Media category at the City Nation Place Awards in London on November 10, 2016. The emojis are published by ThisisFINLAND, Finland’s country brand website, which is produced by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

City Nation Place is the most significant annual conference in the place-branding field. Finland was competing against Philadelphia and Israel in the finals of the Best Use of Social Media category. Finland emojis were also thoroughly presented in a workshop run by National Geographic. Finnish country-branding work was a very visible part of the conference this year, since Helsinki City’s rebranding campaign reached the finals of the Place Brand Strategy of the Year category.

“Finland has many strengths, and also some weaknesses, just like any country,” says Petra Theman, Director for Public Diplomacy at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. “Approaching country brand communications in this honest, authentic way has attracted unprecedented interest and numerous new contacts and collaborations, as well as prizes. This highly esteemed international country-branding award is a very significant recognition of the work done by our small country-branding team.”

Two Finland emojis now included in Unicode Standard

As of November 10, 2016, two Finland emojis (Sauna and Woolly Socks) have been accepted by the Unicode Consortium for inclusion in the Unicode Standard. This means that the emojis will appear in the emoji keypads of all devices (each device will have its own version) and will be available for use within the text of text messages and on all social media channels.

Finland became the first country in the world to publish its own national emojis, in December 2015. Originally, Finland emojis were created as stickers so that their appearance is the same on every device. There are now 49 such emojis in the Finland emoji collection. The first set was published as a Christmas calendar by ThisisFINLAND, the country brand website produced by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. A set of summer emojis was released in May 2016. The emojis have reached more than 200 million people globally.

All 49 emojis are included in the Finland emojis app, available for free download in Google Play and the App Store. They can also be downloaded for all devices as images from ThisisFINLAND at finland.fi/emoji.

Bruno Leo Ribeiro, art director at Hasan & Partners, designed the Finland emojis together with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.